Happy Voting Day. Is it just me, or does this midterm election season seem painfully long? Even though I co-host a weekly podcast that discusses politics, and I’m constantly reminding and encouraging people to get out and vote, I truly dislike politics, and I was honestly quite sick of this whole election process before it even started. Elections in this country have become a perverse and distorted media clown show. Fraud runs rampant, mainstream media outlets purposely censor information from candidates they don’t like, millions of ballots go “missing,” and even dead people can cast votes from the grave. The process of voting was once a respectable and practical system that represented the collective will of the people. Now, it’s a fucking disgrace.

Yes, I am well aware these issues are nothing new. The process of voting has lacked integrity for many years. Policies and procedures designed to make voting more accessible to people have only resulted in the system becoming far worse, opening the doors for increased ballot tampering and fraudulent activity. No, I am not an “election denier.” What I am is someone who believes our voting system has become so distorted, complicated, and easy to manipulate that it’s no longer truly effective.

If you look at the vote.org website, you’ll see a list of all 50 states and the absurdly different voting rules that apply to each state. In addition to in person voting, absentee voting options include voting by mail or voting online. I was actually surprised to see that almost half the country allows online voting. I didn’t even know that was a thing. More surprisingly, I learned that in Kentucky, you can ONLY vote online, and there is no option for in person or mail-in voting. Similarly, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada ONLY allow mail-in voting, and you can’t vote in person or online.

And then there’s the timeframes in which you can vote… In some states, votes have to be received the day before Election Day. In other states, they have to be received by a particular hour on Election Day. And in at least 15 states, ballots can be received anywhere from 3 to 14 days after Election Day, depending on the state, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. New Jersey takes this a step further with a very specific rule stating that ballots need to be received within 144 hours after the polls close, which is essentially 6 days.

What the fuck? No, really. What the fuck? Why are we counting votes two weeks after an election should be over? And why are we giving people almost a month to vote? I understand having early in-person voting for about a week in case people can’t make it to the polls on actual Election Day, but this shit is excessive. It’s not like Election Day is a secret that people find out about 24 hours beforehand with no forewarning. It’s widely publicized for months.

Personally, I find the drawn-out process of our elections and the multiple methods of voting to be rather disturbing. Election Day used to be something special. It wasn’t a month-long affair or something you did on the computer or by mail, unless you were a military member overseas who couldn’t physically get to a voting booth. Otherwise, if you wanted to vote, you made sure to get your ass to your local poll location because it was an honor and a privilege to be a citizen of the United States and have the ability to voice your opinion by casting your vote.

As a young adult, I really didn’t give a shit about voting. I was eligible to vote for the first time during the 1992 presidential election when Bill Clinton ran against the incumbent President George H. W. Bush, but I don’t think I even bothered to go to the polls. Quite honestly, I don’t remember if I voted in the 1996 election either, when President Clinton ran against Bob Dole and Ross Perot. I do, however, remember voting in the 2000 presidential election when George W. Bush ran against Al Gore, and I have subsequently voted in every presidential election since then, but I didn’t start paying attention to state and local elections until I was in my 30’s.

Like many young people who get so wrapped up in their own lives that they don’t care what’s going on until it starts to personally affect them, I didn’t understand the impact of local politics until I was in a position where half of my paycheck was being sucked away by the government in state taxes. Local politics became even more of a focus for me when I purchased a home and had to start paying mortgage interest and property taxes. Where was all of my hard-earned money going? I never saw the benefits of the road improvements and school infrastructure developments that my taxes were supposedly funding, so I started to pay more attention to local politicians and the causes and efforts they claimed to support.

Living in California, I knew my vote didn’t amount to much at the state level. Despite the fact that I had liberal idealistic views as a teenager and young adult, when I started seeing how much of my paycheck was being stolen and wasted by the government, I quickly changed my tune and started to lean more conservative as I got older. Even though I lived in a very blue state, and I knew my vote wasn’t going to change that, I also lived in a community that was somewhat conservative, so my vote did count when it came to decisions being made at a local level. I made it a point to research and understand the issues that were on the ballot, and I proudly went down to the local polling spot at the church or school down the street from my house to vote in person.

When I lived in Washington State, there was no option except to vote by mail, which I did during both the 2020 presidential and gubernatorial elections. I remember receiving my ballot by mail, filling it out at home, and then driving down the street to an unattended ballot box on the corner of the highway in an empty parking lot. Nobody was around. The box itself wasn’t even identified. There was just a cardboard sign on a wooden stick next to the box indicating what it was for. Not even an “I Voted” sticker to show for it. And, yes, I confirmed this was legitimately my ballot box location. It was literally the most depressing and anticlimactic voting process I’ve ever taken part in. And it was super sketchy. Considering I lived in a blue state rife with election fraud, and I knew my vote wasn’t going to matter, I may as well have tossed my ballot into the Puget Sound, which was conveniently located on the other side of the empty parking lot with the ballot box.

When I moved to Texas, I had an entirely different voting experience, starting when I voted in the Texas primary election, earlier this year in March. I went down to my local polling place, produced my state ID, went into the little private booth, inserted the punch card, and made my selections from a small computer screen. My choices were recorded on the card, which I then inserted into the secretive sleeve protector and handed to the voting official, watching her place it into a secure metal box. Did I really know where my vote was going? No, but I had way more faith in this system than I did dropping my ballot into an unattended box in the corner of an empty parking lot.

Most recently, I voted in the current 2022 midterm election a few days ago, and holy shit, that was a new experience. Although I would have liked to vote today, on actual Election Day, I had to travel out of state this week, so I took advantage of the early voting option. I don’t know what made Texas step it up between March and November, but this new voting process was a 4-part accountability operation, and it was fucking awesome.

Upon walking into my polling location, my Texas driver’s license was scanned into a machine, and I had to verify the information and complete an e-signature on the screen. A receipt was printed from the ID machine with a barcode verifying I was eligible to move on to the next step of the process. I then entered stage two, where my barcode was scanned, and I was given a blank voting form to take with me to the actual voting booth in stage three. When I entered the booth, I inserted my blank form into the machine and selected my candidates on the touch screen. After verifying my choices, the machine printed them out on the form, which I carried across the room to another computer, which was placed over a large metal box with a heavy-duty lock.

During this final step in the process, the gentleman monitoring the equipment asked me to double check my form and ensure my selections were correct before they were electronically scanned into the system and recorded. When I said yes, he had me insert the form into the machine, and after my ballot was electronically recorded, he instructed me to drop the completed form into the locked metal box as a paper ballot back-up, in case something happened with the computer crashing or being compromised.

Was this overkill? Maybe. But considering all of the election fraud that inevitably occurs with mail-in voting and electronic ballots, I was more than happy to take part in this 4-step procedure. I left my polling place feeling like a proud American because I physically took part in a process that is supposed to be one of the great privileges and rights of citizens in our country. And I think this concept has been lost, ignored, and taken for granted by the millions of people who don’t vote and then complain about everything wrong with America.

Our voting system needs a complete overhaul. What exactly does that entail? I don’t know, but I do believe our system is broken, and all of the technological advancements and changes made in the name of enhancing accessibility have contributed to compromising its integrity. Personally, I believe voting by mail or online should be abolished, except in specific and limited circumstances where people are physically unable to go to a polling location. If you can leave your house to go to Walmart, then you can go vote. I also believe that voting should require photo ID and proof of citizenship or paying taxes. And no, contrary to the purposeful hate speech being consistently pushed by our corrupt government, it’s not racist or a “threat to democracy” to require proof of ID in order to vote.

Like most things in life, when you give people too many choices and options, and you make everything easy, people become complacent and entitled, and it opens the doors for corruption, greed, and fraud. I hope the results of this midterm election will prove otherwise, but I’m not holding my breath. Perhaps we’ll find out in a few weeks when all of the mysterious mail-in ballots finally show up…

Unapologetically Outspoken,

Tara